Maturing In The Music City
October 24, 2021 | Football, Joel Coleman
With a big win over Vanderbilt, MSU keeps displaying its growth.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – It was a little over a week ago when Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach was asked a question about steps his team needed to take to get to where he wanted the group to be. His response?
"Keep battling and keep grinding away," Leach said.
He couldn't help but add one more thing though: "Well, in our case, get older. If you've got a time machine laying around, I could use a year."
It's no secret that MSU has gone through the first couple of seasons of the Leach era as an incredibly youthful, inexperienced bunch. Yet with age comes wisdom. With repetition comes growth. With time comes maturity.
On Saturday in a lopsided 45-6 victory over Vanderbilt, Leach's guys continued to show they're getting closer to the team their coach, and everyone in Maroon and White, desires.
"I thought we did a lot better job of fighting through adversity," Leach said. "If we stubbed our toe, we did a good job of battling through that. I thought the guys seemed locked into their jobs better, rather than sit and dwell on something that didn't go our way.
"We did some really good stuff."
There was some of that really good stuff on both sides of the football.
Really good stuff like racking up a season-best 522 yards of offense. It was already the fifth time this season that MSU eclipsed 400 yards of total offense after only doing so four times all of last season.
Really good stuff like holding Vanderbilt to just 155 yards of offense. The total stood as the fewest amount of yards MSU has allowed in Leach's 18 games as their head coach.
The signs of growth went deeper than those numbers. There was quarterback Will Rogers shaking off a couple of interceptions to throw a career-best four touchdowns, putting up yet another 300-plus-yard passing performance in the process. Rogers now has 300 or more yards passing in all but one game this season.
There was defensive coordinator Zach Arnett's group moving on from allowing a 61-yard pass early in the game to end up surrendering merely 94 yards on Vanderbilt's other 41 plays for the day. That's just 2.3 yards per Commodore play when you subtract the one long Vandy toss.
Overall, this wasn't just a win for Mississippi State. It was a resounding triumph. Seven days after a tough home loss to Alabama, the Bulldogs refused to sink in sorrow. There was no hangover. MSU saw an opportunity for a bounce back, then went out and handled business the way a maturing team should.
"I think we've got a couple of starts and a couple of months older," Leach gave as the reasoning. "We've been a focused, eager group. The biggest thing, we didn't dwell on disappointment.
"Being disappointed is a decision. I think they just made the decision [to not stay disappointed on Saturday]. When you're together and you work hard, that helps too."
Now with a road win over a Top-15 Texas A&M team and Saturday's dominant showing against Vandy all within MSU's last three games, it's apparent Mississippi State is steadily becoming the Bulldogs Leach wants.
And he's doing it the day-by-day way, with no time machine required; just good, old-fashioned commitment, effort and perseverance.
